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I recently had the chance to talk with Marauder John, of Marauder “Gun Runners” about their exciting new World War II action figure Kickstarter. From their beginnings of producing high-quality 3-3/4” scaled weapons and accessories, through their first action figure Kickstarter that introduced the Marauder Task Force, to the recent addition of the Valkyries, collectors have discovered Marauder products can’t be beat when it comes to military action figures. In addition to their great product, Marauder’s unparalleled customer service has helped establish them as a leader in the action figure collectible business. The Kickstarter just went live, so if for some reason you’re on the fence about making your pledge, learn more below about the WWII endeavor from the man himself- Marauder John!

A ton of great work behind the scenes has been going on for a while, and I’m thrilled to announce that the Kickstarter for the Marauder Task Force RPG is officially LIVE.

Tapping into resources from very talented industry professionals, a really unique gaming system has been built around the Marauder Task Force formula and it promises to be a LOT of fun for folks who love military action figures and military stories.

If enough support is put towards the project, there are even some exclusive Marauder Task Force figures that can be unlocked!

If you’re a fan of Marauder Task Force, or even other 1:18 military action figure lines, this RPG is right up your alley. Check it out at Kickstarter and help support us. I’m beyond thrilled to be involved in writing for this project and greatly look forward to bringing it to fans everywhere upon Kickstarter funding.

As of a few days ago, the folks who backed the latest Marauder Task Force Kickstarter should have started receiving their “BackerKit” surveys, which allow backers the opportunity to tell the Kickstarter creator specifically what products they want (and if they want any add-ons).

But the Marauder Task Force Backer Kit came with a nice little surprise. Marauder has announced that along with the surprise Agency Ops figures that were added to the Kickstarter in the later stages, they will also be releasing female versions of the Agency Ops figures as well! Those figures were available in the Backer Kit and we should expect them to be in the store afterwards as well, which is very exciting news!

Check out the concept art below by the exceedingly talented Troy McKie, good friend of GeneralsJoes and fantastic toy designer to boot. Great stuff, and even more awesome things to look forward to with the release of the Task Force Kickstarter items!

While you wait, make sure to hit up MarauderInc.com and get all the gear your characters will need when they hit your mailbox.

What a final day for the latest Marauder Kickstarter! I was already intrigued by this Kickstarter at launch, merely because the Exo-Suit looked so cool, and I was definitely on the hook for a few of the Contract Ops figures.

The K-9 ended up impressing me more than I thought it would, and then when news got out that they would be making Agency-Ops figures as a part of this deal? Yeah, I knew I was on board.

Whether or not we’d even hit Agency Ops was still in question leading to the last day. It was a stretch goal at the $214,000 $172,000 level, which felt a bit out of reach with 24 hours remaining. But everyone came together, and we ended up smashing that goal, the Kickstarter rounding off at nearly $218,000!

Huge congrats to the always great folks at Marauder for another successful Kickstarter, and a big thanks to Tommy over on the Marauder Task Force Facebook Page who whipped up a spectacular graphic outlining what would be contained in the “All In” pledge level (this is essentially everything that got unlocked during the Kickstarter).

This is a great look at more terrific additions to an already impressive product line. Marauder continues to reinvent 1:18 scale military action figures, and I can’t wait to get my hands on some of these and to see what’s still up their sleeves.

So we’re reaching the zenith of the most recent Marauder Task Force Kickstarter, this one for the revolutionary new Exo-Suit and military K-9, also wrapped up with Contract Ops and the just announced Agency Ops stretch goals (dudes in business suits fer cryin’ out loud!)

There are only three short days left and there is still a some room to grow, especially for folks looking for Agency Ops figures. The stretch goal for business suits stands at $172,000, which is nearly $40,000 above where things currently stand, so if you’re as fired up about those figures as I am, let’s pony up and make that happen.

Meanwhile, to stoke the fire and excite the fans, Marauder has posted images of full prototypes of both the K-9 AND the Exo-Suit and… well… WOW. I won’t lie, the Exo-Suit is my main draw to this Kickstarter, and I am in looooooove with what I see here. Boss Fight Studio continues to push the envelope for design and I’m thrilled that they’re working alongside Marauder on these new installments. Articulation, amazing design, these things have it all.

Check out all of the fantastic prototype images below and let’s all come together and make Agency Ops (and more) a reality! Support the Kickstarter today, only THREE DAYS LEFT.

Amazing update to the ongoing Kickstarter is that Marauder is moving forward on producing 1:18 scale figures in suits, something that’s been missing the marketplace for a very long time. But in true MTF style, they are making them variable with the ability to wear tactical vests and various lower arms.

But that’s not all. Anyone who is interested in the Exo-Suit figures is getting a bunch more bang for their buck. Where previously you had to consider getting the Exo-Suit and the additional accessories in two separate purchases, now every single Exo-Suit will come complete with ALL of the accessories! So if you bought a 6-Pack, you no longer have to use two slots for a complete Exo-Suit. Along with this, they’ve also shuffled around stretch goals and generally ramped things up for a strong finish.

Check out the full text of the Kickstarter update below and get yer wallets ready to finish this thing off BIG. If you haven’t considered supporting the Kickstarter, don’t wait – DO IT NOW.

We passed $100K in pledges…thank you! Thanks to hitting that milestone, the distance between each stretch goal has been reduced to only $8,000! Also, we “adjusted” the order of several of the unlocked stretch goals to meet your requests! Can unlock more K9 Dogs & Contract Ops figures sooner! In addition, the “Exo -Suit” gear sets have been REMOVED from the event… because EACH Exo-Suit will receive ALL those additional weapons & accessories added for FREE! So each Exo-Suit will come FULLY equipped with ALL gear! And lastly, the highly requested “Agency-Ops” stretch goal is now OFFICIALLY in the stretch goals! NOT added as the final stretch goal, but inserted into the middle of the unmet stretch goals! When unlocked, each Agency-Ops figure will come with a full business suit, a 2nd Dress shirt torso, an extra set of rolled up sleeve forearms and Utility vest with pistol & holster.

Ever since getting my first few figures as part of the Kickstarter shipment a couple of weeks back, I’ve been feeding for more and starving to get a review posted. Well, this past week I got both accomplished!

As soon as I got my grubby mitts on the first few Valkyries figures, I immediately needed more and made a purchase from MarauderInc.com within a few days. Once I received that shipment, any love I had for this new generation of Task Force figures and accessories only sky-rocketed.

I feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface with how cool these figures are, and I’ve spent hours swapping parts, gluing gear down and just mixing and matching. It’s pretty astounding just how incredible these toys are. Designed to near perfection by Boss Fight Studio, with the folks at Marauder developing a spectacular concept, these truly are the best of all worlds.

How can I properly express just what lengths Marauder “Gun Runners” has come in the past few years? Evolving from manufacturing and selling unique 1:18 scale weapons to distributing diorama accessories, then finally, through their first successful Kickstarter they started developing their Task Force action figures.

Since then, their second Kickstarter for the Task Force Valkyries was successful as well, and they’ve simply taken their formula for enhancing 1:18 scale action figures and spun it completely into a second stratosphere.

With the first run of Task Force figures, I was suitably impressed with what Marauder had accomplished, actually designing and producing (with the help of the best toy designers in the business, Boss Fight Studio) a fully functional action figure line, yet they were essentially the same figure buck and many of the same accessories, just spun out in some different colors. While certainly exciting, I saw them mostly continuing as enhancements to an already large roster of 1:18 military figures. What a difference a couple of years makes. With what Marauder has done over the past 18 months alongside their additional Kickstarter is to add an immeasurable amount of versatility, customizability and variability to what was already a fantastic formula. Thanks in no small part to the addition of several new female action figure styles, new head sculpts, new arms and legs, and many new paint decos, we now have a veritable barracks of different combinations with the ability to build out any number of combinations of strike teams.

Marauder Task Force is no longer an enhancement, it’s an evolution, and things may very well never be the same again.

Looking at the female figures first, thanks to the sculpting of Boss Fight Studio, we have some of the finest built female figures in 1:18 military history. Fantastic layered sculpting throughout the uniforms, nearly seamless armor enhancements, and the unique “faux-ring” articulation scheme gives us tough and rugged female troopers to serve alongside our roster of male soldiers that we’ve already amassed. Even with the elaborate sculpting, the articulation is absolutely top notch, with great range of motion in every joint.

Along with the standard military buck, Marauder also included some spare arms without armor and developed a brand new t-shirt torso which is spectacular, especially for how comparatively plain it is. The arms are sculpted narrow, but really well articulated, with flexible fingers and wrists that can hold all manner of weapons without fear of breakage.

Additional female head sculpts are incredible as well, with various skin tones, hair designs (and hair colors) allowing for a massive amount of variation here, too.

To equip the female figures there are several different versions of combat vests now available as well, from a plain flak vest (ready for pouches currently sold or that came with the previous Kickstarter), to a great armored vest, and a very nicely sculpted additional heavier combat vest as well.

Along with the Valkyrie female figures, Marauder also included the fantastic Stedi-Cam gunner which added several great new elements to the Task Force collection. Not only did it give us a very cool new weapons system including the gun, armored mask, and armored plate chest (with amazingly engineered web gear) but it also provided some added short sleeved arms and non-armored legs, which has provided a wealth of great variability to the existing Task Force collection. The new limbs match the fantastic sculpting style of the rest of the figure with amazing articulation and some great new flexibility with existing tooling.

But let’s talk more about the web gear and chest plate. The chest plate connects to the web gear via two of the standard Task Force pegs, which means you can take it off, then use the underlying web gear to mount pouches, holsters, and whatever else you can dig out of your Task Force storage bins. For some reason I wasn’t aware of this neat feature, and it was a very pleasant surprise when I got the Stedi-Cam Gunner in hand.

As a great added bonus, Marauder has dedicated a wealth of different plastic color options (and decals!) for the Stedi-Cam gunner gear as well, really ramping up the potential for great mix and match variation.

What may be the coolest aspect of the Stedi-Cam Gunner, though, is the camouflage paint scheme. This intricately decoed camouflage pattern is among the best I’ve ever seen at this scale, and the way Marauder has carried it over to a female figure as well is exceptionally cool.

As you read through this review, you’ll notice that I’ve grouped collections of accessories together, mostly because that’s how they were offered with the Kickstarter. Keep in mind, though, through the wonders of MarauderInc.com you can pick and choose any number of thousands of variations of figures, heads, gear and other add ons which essentially makes the combinations nearly infinite. If you see a figure you like in this review, but think it would look better with different gear, you have that option right at your fingertips.

Keep in mind I haven’t even talked about a number of new male head sculpts in different hair (and beard) colors, not to mention all the new paint schemes and additional new accessories including a fantastic flight helmet with translucent goggles. Don’t even get me started on the baseball hat…it’s made from a fantastic flexible rubber, which lets it fit seamlessly over many different heads, and you don’t get the typical gap or stiff fit that you see when it’s been tried elsewhere. There are bandoliers, belts, a duffel bag, a weapon sleeve, backpacks, baseball bats, the list goes on and on, and each new accessory comes with some level of customization available, whether its decals or holes for the standard Task Force plug. There is just so much to talk about here, it’s very tough to frame a review around it, so I’m trying to look at this from a holistic perspective.

The figures are also incredibly easily customizable with simply swapped ball joints at the hips, the waist, the head, and even relatively easy to remove arms. Boiling and popping is the best way to ensure smooth lower arm removal, though you have to crack the torso to pull off the shoulders.

One comment, because I know people will ask… yes, there are a lot of small parts, and yes I very strongly recommend finding a combination you like and gluing the pouches and accessories down to ensure maximum playability. This stuff is not expensive. You can certainly beef up on more pouches and vests and feel confident that dedicating a few key small accessories to a particular look isn’t going to break the bank, and will only make you happier as you pose and play with the figure you’ve designed.

In short, the improvements and enhancements made to the Task Force line since its inception are impressive and downright amazing. It’s a completely different line now than it was even 18 months ago and has grown into a world of its own. I am fully in love with this evolution of the Task Force, and have already made follow up purchases after the Kickstarter, and I’m poised to make some more. I cannot wait to see where things continue from here and I’m greatly looking forward to the exo-suit Kickstarter coming this year from Marauder.

Great stuff, head over to MarauderInc.com and beef up your barracks now! And if you have any questions about the product or just want to show off your creations, the Marauder Task Force Facebook Group is the place to be. A ton of awesome looking customs and a great community willing to answer all sorts of questions. MJ and Marauder Ruben are always there to interact and listen to suggestions as well. Hit it up!

Kickstarter orders have been fulfilled and Marauder “Gun Runners” has officially started stocking the initial allotment of their outstanding Valkyrie figures! I just got my order last week and these are figures you will NOT be disappointed in. Literally some of the best female figures I’ve ever held in my hands with all the customizability you’ve grown to love with the Task Force assortment.

Do not hesitate, stock will sell quick. Hit up MarauderInc.com and grab ’em before they’re gone!